I am waiting at the foot
of the concrete steps beneath my neighbor’s
maple tree. Every day we walk to school together
in these pleated skirts,
cardigan sweaters, blouses
buttoned to the neck. The boys wear
creased trousers and clip-on polyester ties they
tear off when the bell
rings at lunchtime. Then they wriggle
on the blacktop
like earthworms drying up. The trees
are dropping
helicopter seeds. They drift from overhead, loopy,
green and rosy, to the pavement.
This one dangles from a branch
just coming into bud, caught in an insect’s filament.
The seed rocks back and forth and turns from wing
to wing. It has balanced
its hemispheres perfectly, although
its urge to transit pulses
as a shaft of sunlight passes
through the skin, shadowing the obstinate
bead alive within.